Inamorata
by I.M. Elizabeth
Summary: There was no coming back, that's what she'd assumed. That's what the rules say after all, but sometimes, in the thousands and thousands of years, a second chance is given. Sometimes to those who didn't think they'd deserve it.
1. The Last Time

_**A/N: **Yes. The story I have been dying to begin for quite some time now. Originally, this was planned to be released after I finished The Dark Hour, but since I'm incredibly impatient about such things, I'm going to go ahead and release this now. Because I might not finish the Dark Hour on time, I'm going to add small flashbacks and have characters explaining the events that took place in the Dark Hour. Anyway, hope you enjoy!_

**Inamorata**

_**Disclaimer:** I do not own Death Note or any of its respective characters, nor do I own Erin Blogger who is the property of WhiteLadyDragon. However I do own the original characters seen here, and the writings of this story, please do not use them without my permission._

**Prologue **– The Last Time

_November 1st 2004_

The snow was piling on the grounds of Wammy's House for Gifted Orphans, making everything seem fresh and clean.

It seemed odd and Ryuzaki could not shake the feeling that he should treasure being there, in the very moment he was experiencing. He was not a sentimental kind of man, although the fact that he had deliberately snuck away from his precious Kira case to visit the orphanage would perhaps say differently.

Watari was watching carefully over Light Yagami for him, ready to alert him should the boy even breathe suspiciously.

It was foolish to walk away from Kira so nonchalantly, for something so...sentimental, but he would return to headquarters by nightfall. No one would realize his absence, and he would only be here for an hour.

It was odd that snow would fall on Halloween, a mere night ago. Mello, as usual, had been the first child to alert him to the strange weather, sending him cheery emails late in the hours of the night when he should be safely sleeping in bed.

He couldn't help but feel a bit of fondness for the child, no, that would be a lie. He felt...almost an odd sort of love for the little Russian boy, intelligent and full of emotions, things that Ryuzaki could sometimes only dream of feeling.

His fingers, pale and spidery tapped the window of his office, where he watched the blond teen toss snowballs at his redheaded shadow, Matt. Just a few feet away from Mello's legs was a young girl sitting on a snow covered bench. Her long brown hair was held up in a swan comb at the nape of her neck. She seemed disinterested in the snow however, and far more interested in her artwork.

Ryuzaki's mouth cricked in a smile when Mello stopped his friend from attacking her with snowballs. Mello gave Matt a look and then went to sit by the girl, peering nosily over her shoulder.

He could still remember the first time he ever laid eyes upon the girl, scarcely nine years old at the time.

Ryuzaki had just finished with a rather droll, boring case that had scarcely taken any time at all to solve, but it had simply been something to do, and boredom was sometimes his most challenging foe.

As it was customary, Watari sent him the files about every orphan they were sent to acquire. Watari usually did this himself, but something about this Estonian girl's file had piqued his interest.

Namely, she was a girl.

Wammy's House had only been filled with boys, and the mere fact that there was the possibility of a girl coming to stay among the ranks was intriguing.

The second thing that interested him was that her parent, her mother was alive, and had not wanted her. She was offering to give the girl away, because the girl talked to things that were not there, because the girl was crazy.

Ryuzaki himself had retrieved her, and had brought her back to Wammy's House. It had been disheartening to learn that her english was so poor. In customary tradition, he gave her the name Linda. However, she disliked the changing of her given name, which was Layla.

And Mello disliked the fact she had been given a name at all, or so it seemed.

So, despite Ryuzaki's protests, Linda's name remained Layla to those closest to her.

In an attempt to both teach, and protect her, Ryuzaki had paired her off with Mello, the most brash, insolent child of the House. At first, Ryuzaki had been displeased to find that Mello thoroughly disliked the little Estonian girl, and other than teaching her english as his superior had instructed, the boy did not pay any attention to Layla.

However, Mello was perhaps not as cold as he seemed, because soon after, the pair became inseparable. And like the red haired boy known as Matt, Layla too became another one of Mello's shadows.

But several years had passed since then, and now both Mello and Layla were teenagers. Their childish, supple bodies slowly becoming adult like.

The two teens now sat outside, Layla sketching and Mello simply, watching her. Ryuzaki could not help but notice the strange look in Mello's blue eyes as they shifted from Layla's sketch to her face.

He...wants something, that much is certain, he wants something more.

As if struck by something sudden, Layla's head turned, and for the most brief, bittersweet moment, their lips are close enough to kiss.

Ryuzaki's breath tightened, hitching slightly in his throat, while his nails nearly scraped uselessly against the glass.

_Take the chance._ He pleaded silently.

But, Mello seemed to realize what the act of kissing her might do, and he leaned away with a casual insult. Layla however looked quite disappointed as he walked away, her hand twitching uselessly on the snow covered bench.

Ryuzaki turned his his eyes away from the two of them and strode out of his office.

When he reached the play room, he could not help but notice Near, as usual, alone and playing with his puzzles.

How sad that loneliness came easy to the boy already.

How sad that such boys would choose to be lonely.

Almost on a whim, Ryuzaki strode to the boy's side, and very lightly, tousled the albino child's hair in his fingers.

But Near was not distracted, and merely went on solving his puzzle.

As Ryuzaki stepped outside of the orphanage, he couldn't help but have the slightest feeling that this was the last time he would feel, anything at all.


	2. Waiting

_**A/N:** Sorry for the short chapters so far guys! I've been trying to keep you all up to date on what's happened so I'm really sorry if these chapters are kinda boring. But, I promise, the next chapter will be pretty exciting and will introduce you to our lovely antagonist. Thank you for your readership! _

_February 14, 2012_

**Chapter One** – Waiting

Love. It's such a simple word, it's something that can make, or break a person. Something that can set their heart aflame or turn it to ice, and leave it to drop, shattering into thousands upon thousands of pieces. Then, you'll hurt yourself picking up the pieces, they'll cut your skin, and maybe, they'll be sharp enough to destroy you.

Layla awoke shuddering again, groping at the side of the bed for a hint of warmth. The nightmares had gotten bad again, leaving her breathless and terrified to open her eyes and see the solitude of her bedroom.

Then she felt it, the hard bony fingers trailing into her hair, pulling it gently, attempting to comfort.

"You're dreaming of him, aren't you?" a voice said, nasally, and a little whiny.

_Him. _

The man who broke her heart a thousand times, but always repaired the pieces, putting them back together with a quiet solitude, ignoring how they cut into him. Except now, he was dead, burned to a crisp because of his foolishness and Kira.

She couldn't bring herself to acknowledge the man's absence from her, so she just kept her eyes firmly shut and sighed.

"Who, Sidoh?"

"Mello." the Shinigami replied, and now, its bony fingers slackened a little at the mention of the name.

Now she was forced to open her eyes, to see the strange figure of the Shinigami eying her carefully in the darkened light of the window. His beaklike lips clicked together and he tilted his head owlishly at her.

"Don't cry." he said softly.

He rustled over to her, the bandages making strange papery noises as he moved his mummified bird body over to the bedside.

Then, he was wrapping his odd bone arms around her, a gesture of comfort she had taught him several years ago when she was still a little girl, locked away in an attic with nothing but painted flowers to keep her company.

One would expect a Shinigami to have the most terrible of smells, like death and rotting flesh, considering they were the reapers of the human world, sent to take life from unsuspecting victims. But, surprisingly, Sidoh did not smell remarkable in the least, he only smelled like paper, and a very faint scent of something earthy and damp, but it was not an unpleasant odor.

Sidoh had returned to her, shortly after Mello's death when she had lain on the tile floor of their apartment and for the first time in her life, contemplated what on earth she was supposed to do with herself now.

Life with Mello had always seemed so structured, ordered. Like his father before him, Mello took control of the criminal, mafia lifestyle he enjoyed, giving him generous amounts of cash. In turn, Layla reaped many of the benefits of being the mafia boss' lover. Mello had handled everything from her clothing to her painting supplies. He made sure she had everything materialistic she could have possibly desired. Sometimes though, she wondered if he was only doing such a thing because she had found him and nursed him back to health after he had blown half his face away with a grenade in a botched attempt to escape the Japanese Police force.

He was colder emotionally, keeping her and their friend Matt at a distance, attempting to always appear outwardly as if he was in control of the situation. But even Mello would falter. His temper got the better of him often and he would lash out at anything that opposed him, be it a dish, or Layla herself.

That was the only area where she and Mello were equally matched. Anger. More often than not, Mello would make her so angry that she would launch herself at the eighteen year old, clawing at him with her nails and screaming in Estonian. But, the fights always ended with kisses, sometimes a few days later after they had nursed bruises and wounded pride.

Sometimes, Layla forgot Mello was merely eighteen years old. He'd often seemed like her mother, father, friend, and lover all in one body. She often suspected it had something to do with being an orphan, and seeing what she had come from. Mello valued family, far more than she did, a quality of her personality that he had tried to fix, and often failed.

Unlike Mello, her family wasn't destroyed. She hadn't watched a loved one die. Her family was whole but dysfunctional with a religiously fanatic mother. As a child, she had heard the voice of Sidoh the Shinigami, seen him too. Her mother had assumed she was hearing the voice of Satan, and therefore tried to cure her daughter using her religion. It had drove a rift between the two of them that Layla refused to repair, much to Mello's displeasure.

Layla had only considered Mello and Matt her family, never pausing once to think that the Kira case could send them to their deaths.

Mello had called her, mere moments before his death to tell her goodbye. His words haunted her, the kindness in them, the overwhelming, out of character kindness in them.

_"I love you."_ he'd said, so simple.

But, those three words killed her inside. He'd never told her that before, not once in the four years they had spent together in the twisted world that was their relationship. She'd often fluctuated her views of him, like someone plucks petals from a flower.

_He loves me._

_He loves me not. _

But, in the end, he had loved her.

The thought made her scoff now, how like Mello to wait seconds before his own death to give her the one thing she'd wanted more than anything in the world. He was truly malicious til the end.

When he'd hung up the phone, Layla had stumbled into the bathroom and puked, sick with the idea that Mello would never look at her through those cold, blue eyes.

That night, she'd simply lain on the tile floor and had begged for Kira to kill her. But, little did she know that would have been futile.

Sidoh had arrived soon after. The Shinigami had been her friend since childhood, and she'd relied on him to guide her through the most mundane of life's activities.

It had been two years since the death of her friends, and most of them were spent staring out of a window, simply waiting, simply wanting.

Sometimes, it seemed funny to her. That's all humans really knew how to do, wait and want for things. But soon, soon her time for waiting to would be up.

Sidoh removed his hands from her now, and she sighed, using a hand to pull reluctantly at the long unkempt strands of hair beside her face.

"Are you alright?" he asked softly, "Want some water, or...tea? I think I can make it without setting the rug on fire now."

"Yes." she said softly.

The Shinigami shuffled away, watching the girl lay back down in the bleak darkness of the bedroom.

He'd grown to care for her, how strange, how human.

Now, without that scary human to keep her company, Layla seemed to have lost something deep inside herself. She was listless, never drawing any more, or reading. All she did was sit on the computer, constantly tracking various Kira victims and their deaths.

Death.

It was all she ever thought about now. Even Sidoh could see how she craved it, the strange intensity of her eyes as she asked him over and over again about the Shinigami Realm and what it was like.

But still Sidoh could see the numbers above her head. It was not her time, not yet. And it was his duty to make sure she lived up to that time, for his own sake anyway.

After managing to make some tea without setting off the fire alarm, he wandered back to her room to find she was already sleeping, her breathing light and easy. Shrugging, he set the tea on the nightstand and shifted to a dark corner of the room.

After all, humans were not the only ones who spend their lives waiting.


	3. All In A Name

_**A/N: Yes! Finally a new chapter right? I hope it's not too confusing, but this story will occasionally be going through time skips, considering that this isn't just Mello and Layla's story, but their parent's story too. Sorry for the short chapter. I'm just attempting to set the stage! Enjoy!**_

**Chapter Three **– All In A Name

_January 1993, Moscow_

Smoke filtered neatly through a young man's lips as he watched the snow slowly pile up on freshly scraped sidewalks. He tried not to acknowledge the stares of young children as they passed, knowing that to them, he must have seemed to be a rather frightening sight. He found it particularly hard to shift his gaze upon a small girl with long brown hair, though the only thing that gave him comfort was the fact that the girl's eyes were green, reminding him that there was no possible way the child was his girl looked at him and quickly looked away, seemingly frightened by his long brown hair and heavily scarred face.

"She'd be about Mihael's age now, wouldn't she, Linde?" a voice said softly, a thick Russian accent making his words almost inaudible to the passerby.

"Eh?" the man known as Linde replied, now watching the little girl scurry back to the safety of her mother's skirts as they ventured inside the church just a few feet away from the talking gentlemen.

"You heard me." the other man replied, "I see that look in your eyes when you see a child who looks like that wife of yours."

Linde extinguished his cigarette, dropping it on the snow and crushing it with his boot.

"You must be mistaken, Kolenka. There is no look in my eyes." Linde mumbled, brushing back a few strands of hair that had fallen from his ponytail.

Kolenka laughed mildly, shaking his head and reaching up a hand to feel the slight stubble that covered the underside of his jaw.

"I could make her an offer she couldn't refuse." Kolenka teased, "Then she'd have to let you see your children again."

Though Linde had known Kolenka for several years, it still took him a moment to get used to the mafioso's joke. Kolenka's jokes were often said during inappropriate moments, or tasteless, and he swallowed sharply.

"No. Leave Tuuli out of this," Linde murmured, fixing Kolenka with a stern glare.

Though Linde did not doubt Kolenka's power, he still would not allow him to bring harm to his now estranged wife, son, and daughter. The man had been head of the mafia for several years now, and Linde had seen firsthand the kind of influence his childhood schoolmate had inherited.

Two years ago, Linde's wife, Tuuli, had given birth to a child, a girl. Though it would have perhaps seemed unmanly to admit such a thing, Linde had longed for a girl. His son, Mika was a spitting image of his father, and was Linde's pride. But a girl was a treasure, warm and delicate like a rosebud in the summer, that would blossom into a beauty.

But, now, Linde wasn't sure if he would ever get a chance to see his rosebud blossom at all. The fight with Tuuli had started over something almost ridiculously simple...the girl's name.

Though Linde was proud of his Estonian culture, he longed for his daughter to have something more, travel, adventure, something other than the endless snow that sometimes seemed to plague their home countries.

He had given her the name Layla, an Arabic name that meant "dark beauty." Linde had encountered the the name once on his travels with Kolenka, and had found the name enchantingly beautiful.

At first, Tuuli had accepted the name with no hesitation, but after a few days, her demeanor had become drastically irrational. She'd started to hear voices, coming from the child's crib late at night. Things had escalated after that, eventually ending up in a messy divorce, and leading Tuuli to claim that Linde himself was dead...something that made his heart ache.

He'd tried seeing his children several times, but to his displeasure his wife had sought solace from him by saying he had abused her, that he had pushed her to such dreadful things. That he was cruel.

But still, there was hope that one day someone would bring his children back to him, or that they would grow old enough to find him.

"So," Kolenka said lazily, "How old is your little Layla now?"

"Two." Linde replied, "Mika is four, nearing five in February."

"Ah!" The mafia boss said cheerfully, "Mika is as old as my Mihael now."

But, Linde could not bring himself to smile at his boss and friend. Kolenka was lucky, he got to return home once their duties were finished. He got to return home to a beautiful wife and son. It was hard not to be envious of the Keehl family, very hard indeed.

"You know," Kolenka said, ignoring Linde's displeased silence. "I have a feeling your little daughter and my Mihael would grow close if they had the chance to meet."

Linde snorted, "You mean if...of course."

"Sure sure," Kolenka said mildly, gazing at his friend and bodyguard. "But, perhaps...fate will be kinder to them then it has been to us."


End file.
